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The legal profession may have begun on Mount Sinai, where Moses delivered The Ten Commandments. But today, it's heading into the cloud, where the privacy and security of big data are dramatically changing the legal landscape—especially internationally.

source: CBS

A good illustration came recently, when European Union regulators ordered Google to bolster its privacy policy. The EU put the search giant on notice, saying it must alter the way it discloses and uses personal information collected over the Internet. It also voiced concern that Google may be gathering more data than it really needs.

These days, such stories are as numerous as iPhones on the subway. From Google to Facebook, the Internet pantheon is under siege from regulators worldwide, who fear that what little remains of personal privacy may soon be gone.

In fact, it may already be too late: We live in an age of big data analytics. Consider that Target, the big U.S. retailer, can tell with reasonable accuracy whether a woman is pregnant by which products she buys.

When it comes to data privacy and security, corporations have similar challenges. Big companies store big data: Mountains of information in the form of documents, spreadsheets and email, which since 2006 has been fair game for legal discovery in the United States. And in many cases, that information is spread across physical and virtual networks, and on personal computers, tablets and smartphones. It’s practically impossible for big companies to keep track of it all.

Corporations now routinely seek legal counsel on how to handle big data. “Sending data to different platforms, figuring out what the data means, who’s doing what, who’s tracking it...the rules are still being worked out and are evolving,” says Ken Freifach, an attorney at Zwillgen PLLC, a law firm specializing in data and security. “There have always been law practices that have addressed data privacy. But there’s this new area of practice, big data, that in the last year or two addresses the evolution of how data is being used. It’s changing quickly.”

Adding to the uncertainty is piecemeal evolution of regulations governing privacy and data security, which depend largely on where you live and do business. Europe, Australia, and Canada are in the forefront of tackling data protection, while the U.S. lags, leaving a thorny legal landscape for multinational Internet companies.

In the absence of concrete government leadership, the U.S. legal industry has turned to self governance for data security and privacy guidelines. One big firm, Hunton & Williams, established the Centre for Information Policy Leadership. It aims "to develop innovative, pragmatic approaches to privacy and information security that take into account the requirements of business processes and address the concerns of individuals about the protection of their information." The Centre's newest member: Facebook, which also happens to be a lightning rod in the battle over Internet privacy.

Big data represents both a challenge and opportunity for law firms: On the one hand, they—more than any other kind of business—must protect their own data, because if client information leaks out, a case could go up in smoke.

At the same time, law firms can use big data and advanced analytics to calculate the odds of winning a case for a particular client, and to set billing rates.

Yet it cuts both ways: Consumers also can take advantage of the democratizing effects of big data. In fact, there’s an app for that: RateDriver enables users to quickly determine the appropriate rate they should expect to pay for attorney’s fees in 51 U.S. markets.

"Big data holds promise to improve the legal profession and the quality of service that we deliver to clients, says Carolyn Elefant, a Washington, D.C., attorney and technology evangelist. "Significantly, big data would inject a strong dose of transparency into lawyer marketing and assist consumers in hiring lawyers. How so? Because big data can be used to show the likelihood of winning a case and the true cost."

In short: Cloud computing poses legal challenges, such as privacy problems; but the cloud also offers benefits to the legal profession and their clients, if harnessed with big data analytics.

Dave Einstein is a veteran print and digital journalist, having worked for The Associated Press, Los Angeles Times and Forbes.com. He currently writes the weekly Computing Q&A column for the San Francisco Chronicle.